1. Field
One or more embodiments of the present invention relate to an image processing method, more particularly, to performing an image segmentation so as to extract a building region from an input color image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, research is being conducted regarding three-dimensional (3D) image modeling from a color image. In connection with this research, one of promising technique is an image processing technique that performs segmenting a ground region, a building region, and sky region from the image. Image Segmentation is a technique that extracts an interesting region from a given image and importance of the technique is increasing because the 3D image modeling and also Motion Pictures Experts Group 4 (MPEG-4) encoding method are based an object. Specifically, the image processing technique that segments the building region from the other images may significantly affect efficiency of the 3D image modeling of urban scenes.
The method of extracting the building region from the input color image is based on the image segmentation that separates the building region from other regions. The image segmentation algorithm includes a Region-based approach and an Edge-based approach. The Region-based approach is a method which performs grouping of adjacent pixels in a space based on the fact that values, colors, or textures of the adjacent pixels in the same region are similar with each other. The Region-based approach includes a Region growing, a Region splitting and merging, and a Clustering method.
However, according to a conventional art, since a method for identifying a region which belongs to the building region among the grouped regions is not suggested, directly segmenting the building region using a single image processing method is impossible. Thus, an algorithm besides the image segmentation method is separately required.